Costa Mesa City Council to discuss Westside housing tract proposal

A proposed new housing tract in the Westside is among the items up for discussion by the Costa Mesa City Council on Tuesday.

A Newport Beach firm, N.A.L. Financial, is seeking to build six new homes on a nearly half-acre lot at 592 Hamilton St.

The houses would replace four apartments built in the 1950s.

The two-story homes, ranging from 1,560 square feet to 1,715 square feet, would contain two or three bedrooms. Twenty-two parking spaces, 15 of them within the homes’ garages, have been planned into the development to meet city parking requirements.

City staff noted that the Hamilton parcel is zoned to have up to nine homes that could be three stories tall.

The new tract is predicted to increase traffic, according to city projections, from 27 car trips a day to 57.

The council will provide initial feedback to N.A.L. Financial, which will then refine the project before bringing it back to city officials later this year.

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Fairview Park trail

The City Council will also examine an Aug. 27 Parks and Recreation Commission recommendation for a new trail in Fairview Park that bypasses an unstable bluff by traveling through an adjacent canyon instead.

The new 8-foot-wide trail would replace an aging asphalt path, built in 1988, that goes down the eroding bluff and into county-owned Talbert Regional Park.

City staff wish to build the new trail with colored concrete, a material believed to blend better within the existing landscape than asphalt.

The 1988 asphalt path would eventually be torn out and replaced with native vegetation.

Councilwoman Sandy Genis has expressed reservation about the plans.

In a review request she filed Sept. 2, she argued that the new trail appears to conflict with Fairview Park’s master plan habitat restoration effort for the canyon. Genis also contended that the commissioners did not consider the proposed trail’s effects on the riverine habitat within the canyon.